Eleanor walked up the broken pavement towards the old school, focussing on her feet. Sweat was running down her arms as she balanced two buckets of soapy water in each hand and a bag with brushes on her shoulder. When she reached the hole in the fence, she placed the buckets and the bag under a bush, stood up, and overlooked the dried grassland behind the school. The windows of the nearest apartment blocks were blinded by the afternoon sun. Nobody was to be seen.

“What we know is there are trans people and there are prisons and sometimes the two overlap. It happens all over, but I’m from California, so let’s talk about the US.

We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, beating Russia, Rwanda, and China by far. We have about five percent of the world’s population and twenty-five percent of world inmates, spending about $24,000 (€18,000) per inmate per year. The statistics are fuzzier regarding who is transgender, but recent estimates place about 0.3% of adults. A small subset, and yet we are disproportionately arrested. Sixteen percent of US trans people report incarceration at some point, though the spread isn’t even. You can make that twenty-one percent for transgender women, and forty-seven percent for people who are transgender and black.”

For MOM#3 we’ve been collaborating with the organizers of Ladies Rock Camp Japan quite a bit. Nami, one of the organizers, drew the amazing poster that functions as a cover for the magazine and also made an illustration for one of the stories in the magazine. Ritsuko, who I met while she was visiting Berlin earlier this year, introduced us and helped with translating things.

So while we were sitting in Germany getting the magazine ready to be printed, Nami and Ritsuko were in Japan and preparing Ladies Rock Camp Japan. Communicating back and forth, the idea came up to publish the story that Nami illustrated as a zine in Japanese. Together with a tape by Ritsuko’s band gummybear both came out in April 2015 to support Girls/Ladies Rock Camp Japan, a month before MOM #3 was released in Germany.

In order to give you some background information about our amazing partner in Japan, they answered some questions for us, that you can read on Transnational Queer Underground.

We are happy to announce the publication of the 3rd issue of Make Out Magazine, a queerfeminist D.I.Y. magazine, published in Berlin, with contributions written in both English and German.

Make Out Magazine – for us, that means: locking lips, letting sexy sparks fly, igniting new ideas, developing concepts, questioning social structures and comprehending the world. Make Out Magazine – also known as MOM – doesn’t strive to condescendingly point fingers like a traditional heteronormative mother, but rather gleefully stick them in that place where it squeaks really nice. So we can say it with a clear conscience:

Listen to your MOM!

MOM #3 – dirt issue was published in the summer of 2015. Inside its pages, you’ll find dark room stenches, messages from the beyond, how to make Bloody Marys from menstrual blood, souvenirs from love affairs, sexy comics, and much more. We printed 500 issues and the first 200 issues come with a lovely poster folded as it’s cover. There’s only about half left, so be quick to get your copy! The magazine with poster and sticker costs € 4,- without the poster € 2,50. You can order the magazine online at the Transnational Queer Underground Shop: www.transnational-queer-underground.net/shop and in some selected stores in Germany.